Now I’m really intrigued. I grab the pen and scrawl my name on the line. “Signed.”
“Okay. I work as an analyst for a clandestine division of Cole Security Forces, and a large part of my job is acting as a liaison between my team and various alphabet agencies in the government.”
“But the truth is . . .” I prod.
“The truth is a lie. Do you understand?”
Not even a little, but the word clandestine is screaming at me.
“I do . . . not. Are you a spy?”
“We frown upon that word.”
She’s kidding, right? “Wait, you really are?”
“No, I’m not. I work for them. I’m not in the field.”
My mind is coming up with all kinds of shit thanks to all the spy movies I’ve watched. She’s like . . . fucking cool.
“Considering you work for a security firm, I’m going to assume what you do is dangerous.”
She nods.
“Maren, if you want me to be on the same page as you, you need to tell me a bit more. We’re supposed to work at the same company and be getting married. I get you can’t tell me everything, but I’m lost here.”
“I know, and I know you signed the NDA, but there are very few people who really know what I do—or did. I don’t know how much to say when everything inside of me says not to speak at all. Even Oliver and I didn’t talk about work and I am his analyst. It’s like my job and I aren’t the same. They’re separate parts of me. My dad is the only person I’ve ever disclosed anything to, which was limited, but he loved it. He had dreams of being a field agent, like Oliver is.”
“No shit,” I say with a little awe.
“Yup.”
“I’m fucking badass.”
She rolls her eyes. “You are, but not for that reason. My ex, Oliver, does a lot of covert missions. I’m part of the support team. My job is analytics and risk assessment, so I help outline the team’s tasks and troubleshoot all the possible failure points.” She pauses and runs her finger along the rim of her glass. “Basically, I find the best series of actions to get our guys in and out safely. Then I find every alternate situation they might run into and find them a way out of it. My goal is to get the team in and out with the least amount of risk or injury.”
I blink a few times. “Injury?”
“Sometimes it’s inevitable.”
“Okay. And you said you work with other agencies?”
“Yes, we do.”
I’m impressed. Not going to lie. I want to ask a million questions, and I fully plan to, but she really doesn’t look like she wants me to ask which agencies, so I set that question aside for now. “What do you tell people who ask what you do?”
“I do admin work for a security team. All very boring.”
“Sounds like it’s anything but boring.”
Maren giggles. “Really, not many people ask anything beyond that. My aunts and uncles know very little. Daddy knows a lot more since he sort of lives vicariously through me. Of course, I withhold a lot of the info to keep the team safe, but he doesn’t mind. Still, he will think you work with me, so he’s going to want to talk shop with you. There’s really no avoiding it.” She chews on her lower lip, drawing my whole focus to that single action. “I’ll be with you almost all the time, so I can handle it if he does, but if he gets you alone . . .”
“I’ll need to be able to divert?”
“Which isn’t going to be easy. It’s what he loves, so you’re going to have to answer without actually answering.”
“I see,” I say with a smirk. “I get to make up stories, and you’ll have to go along with it?”
Maren’s eyes widen. “Uh, well, you probably should not do that.”
“Probably.”
“Oliver,” she says with a little warning in her tone. “You have to stick to the story.”
“The one that you wrote.”
“Yes, because it’s the best option.”
I lean back in my chair, rubbing my chin like a villain. “We shall see if I do that.”
She tosses the napkin at me.
“I’m kidding. Look, I’ll go along with this and do my best for you and for your dad.”
She smiles softly, tucking her long blonde hair behind her ear. “Thanks. You are really just . . . you are an amazing man.”
So amazing that I’m still single and have been dumped by two women I wanted to marry. Yeah, I’m totally fucking great.
“Well, good thing that I was here when you needed me.”
“It is, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m clearly out of my mind.”
I take her hand, squeezing. “Maybe you are, but you’re following your heart.”
“If you ask anyone who works with me, I don’t have a heart.”
“Anyone who has ever met you knows that’s not true. If you didn’t, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you.”
Heartless people don’t fake weddings for their dying fathers. Just a fact.
“Well, it’s all for him.”
I can see she’s uncomfortable so I change the topic back to safer grounds. “Tell me about your childhood, the things your fiancé should know.”
“You remember my mom died when I was little?”
I nod. Her mother was killed by a drunk driver while she was on her way home from work. It was truly horrific and something that really shaped her life. Maren was always the designated driver and wasn’t above stealing someone’s keys to keep them from driving if they had been drinking.
“After that, he was my everything, my best friend. I was all he had left of her, so we clung to each other. We were a team, you know? Still, it was like I was so afraid to do something stupid or get hurt and break his heart that I wouldn’t dare come close to taking risks. Then he married Linda, and I felt like I lost him.” She squeezes my hand again, reminding me that her palm is pressed to mine, but when I move to pull away, she tightens her grip. “It was slow at first, but he changed. He was still overly protective and didn’t want me out of his sight, but it felt like he never wanted Linda to think she was left out, does that make sense?”
“It does, but didn’t you tell me he didn’t want you to go to college so far away? That doesn’t sound like a father who doesn’t care.”
“Oh, yeah, that was a huge fight. He begged me not to go.”
I remember her struggling a lot with being away. “Why did you?”
Maren shrugs. “I needed to, otherwise I never would have figured out who I was outside of being his daughter. My leaving was what allowed him to be around only Linda.”
The way she says her name is almost a sneer. “I take it you don’t get along?”
“How’d you guess?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . . just a hunch.”
Maren grins. “She was wonderful in the beginning of the relationship. She never pushed me to think of her like a mother or overstepped. My father got sick shortly after they got married, and even then, she was so great. Dad would’ve died if it weren’t for her. I’m sure of it.”
I clear my throat. “Then what changed?”
“Time, I guess. He got better, and they seemed happy, so it took me a long time to notice that something was off. She controlled everything. What he ate, where he went, who he talked to, and how often they spoke. She became the gatekeeper of him.”